Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Higher Education Paradigm Shift

I wrote
earlier about de-specialization, and I think that is the key to saving higher
education. The first two years of any college experience should revolve around
showing students how subjects relate to one another, and how to view subjects
with a critical eye towards making still more connections. English, math,
psychology, history, and art are not separate subjects, but rather pieces of a
whole education that is the very baseline of higher thinking. It is for this
reason that colleges and universities require subjects in what is termed
general education, but the term and lists of classes are as far as anyone has
taken it.

The fact of
the matter is that various departments segregate these general education
courses from one another. Each department concerns itself only with its
internal business and the competition to make it rise above its peers.

Complicating
this structure is that the general education courses within a given department
are disdained. They are not real courses that the department cares
about. The courses are relegated to teaching assistants and adjuncts as full
professors feel such subjects are beneath them.

It’s time
to pull these courses away from their departments to form a new collective
group purely for general education. It would take all of these courses from the
various departments and coordinate them, teach them in such a way that the connections
between subjects are emphasized. Let the individual departments worry about
further specializing the students.